Making Headway
by notunbroken
Summary: A collection of vignettes on the dates (and non-dates) that happened in the ether.
1. Many Lives

_Spring, 2015_

Andy takes Sharon to a gelato place near the pier in Santa Monica. It's a Saturday in April, and the morning air is misty and cool where it rolls off the Pacific. A few tourist types wander around on the sidewalk outside, dressed for a summer that has yet to show up, lingering to stare at their phones in the hazy sunlight. But Sharon and Andy are the only ones chasing down dessert foods at five after eleven in the morning, responsible adults that they are. They're inside almost as soon as the slight teenager manning the counter has unlocked the front door for the day.

"It gets overrun later on," he told her earlier, standing in the doorway of her condo. He knew going in that he'd need a good explanation for towing her across the city for ice cream...and before noon, at that. She just grinned, keeping any questions she might have had trapped behind her lips, and dropped a few accessories into her purse before following him out the door.

Once inside the shop, Sharon doesn't just glance at the flavors. Of course. She _examines_ them, drawn close to the freezer and squinting at the miniscule text on each label. She won't be able to pick without weighing the pros and cons of each variation. With their surroundings deserted enough to echo the slap of her sandals against linoleum as she makes her way down the line, she doesn't have to rush.

Andy is content to watch her deciding. Sharon is a woman of process, and on days like this, time is not a factor. She makes her choices, no matter how small, with an almost enviable sureness. Her gears are always turning.

Somewhere around black cherry, she lets her hand drift back to entangle her fingers with his. The distracted familiarity of the gesture leaves him grinning as she continues her examination.

Once she's read through the gelato options, Sharon watches the girl behind the counter pour batter onto a hot iron. "Waffle cones?"

"Those are pizzelle." The shop is soon filled with the scent of warming sugar and a slight bite of licorice.

"Oh, of course." Her mouth dips into a slight frown as she stares at the chalkboard hanging over the register. "It's hard to forget there's a whole world of desserts out there."

With a soft laugh, Andy says, "Speak for yourself."

She shakes her head as if the number of options is too much to comprehend. Maybe it's a feint, more likely it isn't, but Sharon doesn't look away from the menu as she takes a few small steps back. She follows the path of their twined fingers until her shoulders rest against his chest.

"Okay, you're the expert." She turns her head just slightly toward him, "What's _affogato?_ " Her movements are loose, natural, like this is something they _do_ , casually leaning into one another while ordering dessert for lunch.

And, well, maybe now it _is_. But the setting has an air of wonder in it, like he's up and driven them on a daytrip to a side dimension; one where Sharon is not only his no-pretenses significant other, but has been for months, maybe years. Here they can stand in public, looking like A Couple, and it isn't strange at all.

It's a good notion. Andy goes with it, resting his free hand on her hip and bringing his mouth closer to her ear, if only to test the theory. "Gelato with espresso."

Maybe it's his imagination, maybe it's the chill of air conditioning in the shop, but she seems to shiver a bit. Either way, the corners of her mouth curl upward as she hums a response.

Having turned out several short stacks of pizzelle, the gelato girl looks up expectantly. She is oblivious to the odd twist of reality occurring on the other side of the counter. "Have you decided what looks good?"

"Oh, it _all_ looks good." Sharon's easy charm appears like headlights on a winding road, sudden and bright. "Does the limoncello flavor have real limoncello in it?"

The girl nods, her bottom lip held between her teeth as firmly as she grips the gelato scoop. Sharon tilts her head in silent response, back to deliberation mode.

Catching the meaning behind the question, Andy says, "You don't need to worry about that."

She squeezes his hand, doesn't register a moment of hesitation in answering, "If you think we're not sharing, you're mistaken." The words are delivered in what he considers to be her signature tone, light-but-no-nonsense, which he's no longer surprised to hear applied to food or movies as easily as search warrants or legal arguments.

They end up with five flavors of gelato and three varieties of still-warm pizzelle between them, along with two strong Americanos in old-school paper cups.

When she rings up the haul, the girl behind the counter fights back her shyness enough to ask where they're visiting from. Andy pauses to shave the sarcasm from what would be his standard response, not wanting to embarrass the girl for making the reasonable assumption that the grown-ups buying a meal's worth (okay, two meals' worth) of ice cream might be on vacation. In this gap, Sharon glances to the pile of cups and napkins and and plastic spoons on the counter, meets his eyes, and promptly dissolves into laughter. She turns her back to the register, as if she can hide this reaction, and ends up with her forehead against his shoulder.

Faced with this, Andy hesitates to give the honest answer, held back by the stupid idea that he shouldn't risk breaking whatever spell seems to be at play in the moment. Maybe in this dimension they're high school sweethearts who are visiting LA for the first time ever, having lived out their lives in some flat, quiet Midwestern town. Maybe they're more cosmopolitan, checking off destinations from some gelato guidebook so they can tell the girl, _This is better than we had in Rome!_ Maybe they're an insurance adjuster and accountant on a therapist-ordered vacation, trying, through spontaneity, to mend a relationship that's worn thin.

Or maybe she's her and he's him and they have their own story that doesn't fit a mold, by any means. But it's sound and sometimes astonishing and it's as improbable as it is theirs.

Andy crooks a thumb toward Sharon, "Los Feliz," and himself, "Studio City."

"Oh," the girl smiles, opening up a little more, and hands over his change. "Not far, then."

Maybe this place is a window into something else, some other way of being. Even if it isn't, maybe for now it's enough to catch a glimpse. As he and Sharon make their way outside and down to the beach, Andy turns the gelato girl's words over. Even in the day-to-day, they are not far from here. They can visit any time they want.

But even after their lunch on the beach ( _"We're ridiculous," Sharon says, laughing again, "and we can't actually refer to this as lunch, I don't care how hard you sell it."_ ) stretches into an afternoon strolling the pier and its surroundings; after Sharon has pulled sunscreen and her Dodgers hat from her purse, mumbling something about UV and burning and freckles; after they exchange at least five rounds of "You aren't wanting to head back, are you?" "No." "You're sure?" "Yes."; the surreal feeling lingers.

Through a mutual, unspoken decision, they're back in his car by sunset. Taking it in from above the PCH might have been too much, even under the circumstances. But the orange-pink-violet light filters into the car for most of the drive, and the air flowing through the lowered windows becomes drier, warmer, more pleasant as they get further from the coast. The radio colors the road noise and their comfortable silence with songs of long-past summers and nostalgic simplicity.

Sharon stares out the window, mostly, to the stretch of houses and surface streets they pass in a near-blur. The brim of her ballcap is pulled low enough to rest against the corners of her glasses, obscuring her eyes. But even with her fingers curled idly against her lips, he can't miss the contented smile there.

Maybe, by steering eastward, Andy is pulling them back to their normal plane of existence, and maybe that doesn't look much like a day spent at the beach. But he takes Sharon's hand shortly after merging onto the freeway, and neither moves to break the contact until he's exiting the 101 onto Hollywood.

 _I'm just getting over this_  
 _My fingers are arguing over which_  
 _One of them gets to climb down your wrist_  
 _Introduce themselves to yours first_  
 _I try to make sense of this_  
 _Cause my lips are starting to make a list_  
 _Of all of the things that they seem to have missed  
Before the day that they met yours_

 _Oh, but how many lives have we_  
 _How many lives have we  
How many lives have we led?_


	2. Meant to be a Memory

_A/N: Hey everyone! So, as some likely noticed, this is another migration over from Ao3. Usually I'd space the chapters out a bit, but this is technically a WIP, even if it's just a collection of standalone short stories, and I_ may _have a new chapter incoming. Just as soon as I wrestle off this gross writer's block I'm dealing with._

 _Still, in preparation, I'm uploading all three of the existing chapters now, so I can add the new one to both Ao3 and FFN once it's ready. Enjoy!_

* * *

 _Early 2014_

On a day when what passes for winter in LA gusts down its broad streets, the Murder Room is quieter than usual. They're in paperwork mode, wrapping up documentation for their most recent case. Save for the low-level clacking of keyboards and the occasional smart-ass remark from the front of the room, it's quiet enough for Andy to hear the wind pushing up against the windows.

There is a heavy distraction in Sharon's mood that has settled over her office like a thick fog. Andy is close enough to notice it where the others wouldn't. It might be appropriate to ask her what's up, it might not. But he recalls a throwaway comment she made weeks ago about being a refugee from the cruelty of winters back east. Weather is as good a reason as any to fade into a lull, he figures, but no reason to stay there.

With a few swipes across his phone screen, he launches Google and sets to looking up a strip mall Vietnamese joint that he'd stumbled across years ago. Time and the cyclical nature of the restaurant and real estate markets work to make the finding a difficult task. But find it he does, or at least something close enough to consider a match.

Andy frames the invitation as calling in a raincheck, making up for a post-show dinner that had been canceled by the appearance of a body in the river. He half-expects Sharon to brush it aside in favor of paperwork or some other, less specific deflection. Maybe she does too. She opens her mouth, closes it again, and looks out onto the office for a long moment before looking back to him with the suggestion of a smile.

"Sure, that would be great."

An hour or so later they're in a plastic booth with red vinyl-covered chairs, hidden from the wind blustering outside. The dining room is arranged under vivid paper lanterns that hang at odd intervals, tucked between drop ceiling tiles. Several of the fluorescent lights flicker in a rapid static pattern. It's not a high-class establishment, but it's got a certain atmosphere, warm and unpretentious.

Waiting for the food, they fill time with companionable chit-chat. It's an easy rhythm of conversation that soaks up the wait, bouncing from football to the rumor mill at work to their kids. Sharon is explaining Ricky's latest tech venture when her phone starts ringing. She breaks off mid-sentence, glances at the screen, rolls her eyes.

"I should just let this go to voicemail." The words are directed to the table as she stares at the screen. The phone buzzes on. She drums her fingertips against the tabletop. Before Andy can decide whether it's appropriate to ask who it is, she sighs and mutters an apology without looking up.

She jabs at the screen and answers with a pointed, "What?"

Few people earn this type of greeting from her. Sharon tends to keep the shroud of civility up for as long as possible before exposing her sharp ferocity. Andy's been on the receiving end of that sudden shift a few times, over the years. This, though…

"I'm out. Why?"

She stares down at her nails, then brings them idly to her lips as she listens. This can only be one person. She drops her hand before she speaks again, so her voice rings clear. "No, you may not."

This part of her, Andy hasn't quite figured out.

"Jack!" She glances around at the few other diners huddled over their own formica tabletops, immersed in their own issues. She clears her throat, lowers her voice, tries again. "I do not want you going into my home when I'm not there. Period."

Andy tries to avert his attention, picking up his own phone and pretending to check email. But there's only so much he can do, sitting directly across from her. On some level, he assumes if she didn't want him to hear, she would have excused herself.

Even while trying to read some Mets or Brewers boxscores on his phone, Andy doesn't miss the shift from annoyance to exhaustion in her voice when she says, "I don't care."

Her relationship is nothing like a marriage. Andy might not have authority to judge, but he does anyway. He glances up to find Sharon's eyes closed. She rubs at the bridge of her nose, the movement lifting her glasses askew.

"Either call me ahead of time, or-"

She drops her free hand from her face, and her voice sharpens again. "I don't care that you have a key. It's not your residence. I'm not giving you permission to enter. If I find out that you have gone through that door without my knowledge, I'll have you arrested."

The waitress arrives, a tiny woman balancing a tray with two basketball-sized bowls of brothy soup and several small dishes filled with garnishes. Sharon winces up at her - another witness to this mutilated corpse of a relationship - before angling away, The waitress doesn't care, anyway. She's focused on unloading the tray with short, deft movements.

Sharon speaks toward the wall. "I'm finished discussing this."

The waitress turns to Andy. "Anything else?"

He shakes his head without elaborating, not wanting to disrupt the conversation across the table. Later, he'll think that he should have spoken up, asked for some peppers or a mug of coffee that he didn't want, just to get his voice out there. Even in retrospect, though, he won't know what the point of that would have been. To piss Jack off? To be a lightning rod? To help bolster the notion that Sharon is doing just fine, thanks?

And how, exactly, would he describe his concern over the whole situation anyway?

Instead, Andy says nothing. He drinks ice water and watches Sharon sit up straighter. Her eyes dart to his, then away again. She draws a long breath through her nose. "You should know I'm getting the locks changed. I'll send the books to your office."

She flicks her tongue against her bottom lip. "Yes, I'm serious. And I need to go."

She waits a moment, but, when the tinny drone of Jack's voice continues on, she rolls her eyes and hangs up. With a heavy sigh, she drops the phone into her bag, then pushes the bag under her chair. She's still leaned over when she says, "I'm sorry about that."

"Don't worry about it." No one gets to pick their spouse thirty years down the line, after all. Not even someone as careful as Sharon.

Purse secured, she sits back up. She tucks a lock of hair behind her ear and arches an eyebrow at her soup. "Is this a bowl, or a bathtub?"

Her comment bats away the lingering discomfort from the phone call. He chuckles. "Well, you won't go away hungry, that's for sure."

"I guess not." She settles back into her seat. "How long do you have to wait before it's cool enough to eat?"

"Well, you could eat it now…"

Her gaze lifts to the ceiling. "How long do you have to wait before it's cool enough to eat _without_ scalding your mouth?"

"That'll be a few minutes, at least."

She leans forward again, examining the condiment dishes, turning bottles on the table to read their handmade labels. Andy means to ask if she'd like hot sauce, but finds himself saying, "Is everything okay?"

Sharon looks up at him, eyes wide, as if he hadn't been sitting across from her while she was on the phone. Then again, it could be that she doesn't get many opportunities to answer that question. Her lips twist into a half-smile. "It's not good, but it's okay."

"You just threatened to have your husband arrested."

"Which ensures that he'll stay away from my condo." Sharon presents this as a simple fact, laying out her evidence, as if every couple goes through periods of threatening each other with police action.

Torn between asking whether Jack has often shown up to her place uninvited and suggesting that threats of arrest might not be the healthiest approach, Andy stays quiet. The failed relationships in his wake speak to his lacking expertise on the topic at hand.

She elaborates anyway. "I'm still just trying to figure out what made him move back to L.A.. I haven't even started getting used to him being here again."

This surprises him. "I thought he moved back because you're here."

She laughs like he's nailed the punchline on a particularly hilarious joke. "No," she says, the remnants of the laugh still coloring her voice. "I can assure you that isn't the reason. He knows I'm not interested in reconciling."

Andy frowns down at his chopsticks, trying to piece together an appropriate response. No one deserves this kind of purgatory. Under the circumstances, as he's beginning to understand them, Sharon deserves a medal and an annulment delivered by the Pope himself.

He can't quite break the sentiment down into a nonchalant quip.

When he glances at her, though, the corner of her mouth tips upward. "Go on," she says. "I know you want to ask."

He does want to ask. He wants to understand, so that he can do something, so that he might return some of the help and understanding Sharon has shown him. He wants to know how everything went so wrong for her. He wants to be able to tell her that it's okay: okay to be angry, okay to push back, okay to let it go. He wants to tell her that she's already moved past this.

Instead, Andy reaches for the bean sprouts, dumps half of them into his soup. "It's none of my business." He tips a blob of hoisin into the broth and mixes it. Without looking up, he adds, "As long as he isn't threatening you, anyway."

In his peripheral vision, she tilts her head toward him. "Then it becomes your business?"

"I'd say so, yeah. I don't like it when people terrorize my friends."

She dips her head, concealing something in her expression, then dismisses it with a short shake of her head. "I don't think you have to worry about that," she says, her tone lightening. She sprinkles some fish sauce into her bowl. "He never cared enough to inconvenience himself."

She could be talking about the weather, for the lack of emotion in her voice. Something about her words combined with that nonchalant tone sets Andy on edge.

But Sharon isn't telling her own story right now. "And given that all of his old buddies have moved on from the public defender's office, he wouldn't be able to sweet talk his way out of trouble, the way he used to."

She swirls her garnished soup with a flat-bottomed spoon. The steam wafting from the broth curls the hair framing her face and fogs the lenses of her glasses. She squints into her bowl and quirks an eyebrow at what she finds. "This looks like a challenge, Andy."

"Sorry, there's no glamorous way to eat pho."

This earns the smallest hint of a genuine smile. "Ah. Now you tell me."

Even with food and conversation, her mood is darker than before, making itself known in downcast eyes and short answers. At the same time, Andy's curiosity ramps up. He turns over what she'd said after her phone call. By the time his bowl is empty and hers is tepid and abandoned, he's worked up the nerve to tackle the question she'd hinted at before.

It's reckless, asking this, even despite her earlier permission. It's like he's slashing through some very strategically placed red tape in their friendship, breaching some kind of boundary. Sharon hasn't been cagey about her past, sprinkling hints here and there. But she seems most comfortable in a state of detached propriety, not discussing the specifics. Like an heir who never admits his net worth; the details are uncouth. Andy can't help but consider whether he's being pushy, feeling so driven to understand why she'd keep choosing this for herself.

Having been considered worse things along the way, he decides to take the plunge.

"Okay," Andy takes a deep breath. "So why are you still married?"

For several seconds Sharon's only answer is to cup her tea mug between her hands and draw out two long syllables. "Hm. Well…"

In her silence, he's struck with a jolt of self-doubt, a moment of freefall where he's afraid he's upset the entire balance of this, whatever _this_ is. He clears his throat. "That _is_ what you were expecting me to ask, earlier, right?"

She grins, or curls her mouth in a way that's passing for a grin today. "Yes."

"Oh. Because I figured then that you already had an answer."

"I do." She nods slowly, releases her mug, skims the surface of the soup with her spoon. She opens her mouth and, after a moment, closes it again.

He makes a process out of folding his napkin and arranging his chopsticks and the empty garnish dishes within his bowl. Eventually, though, Sharon's continued silence spurs Andy to give her an out. "Don't worry about it, you don't need to-"

She holds up her hand, quieting him. "No, it's fine." Her attention remains on the motion of swirling through her soup, her brows lightly furrowed."It's just that I don't have a _good_ answer. It's hard to explain."

The way she thinks, he doubts that. "Lucky for you, it isn't a test." This tips her grin into something more genuine, so he adds, "Your answer won't be graded."

A short laugh breaks through her facade. "Well, in that case," She rests the spoon on her discarded napkin and folds her hands on the table. With a glance around the room, she leans back into her chair, settling in.

"Having been brought up Catholic…" She trails off, no doubt trying to gather the thousands of nuances within that phrase into a short explanation. It's an unnecessary step.

"Oh, I know that baggage. Believe me."

"Of course." Her expression warms along with her voice. "Well, then, you're familiar with the idea that marriage isn't just a personal decision. It's one that involves your entire family, their entire family," she rolls her hand in a circle, "the parish, the priest, God, whomever else cares to know."

"Right."

"And, like I told you at Nicole's wedding, my marriage was rather sudden." She looks away, a smile hinting across her lips. It's as complex and layered as her memories must be, looking back. "Marrying Jack was the one time I just followed my gut. I did it because it felt right at the time."

It must have been a shock to everyone for calm, measured Sharon to announce that she was about to move across the country with a ring on her finger. It's stupid, since he didn't know her then, but Andy feels a pang of loss for the young woman who'd thrown her future into hope like that. The path from there to here couldn't have been anything but disastrous.

"We had our plans," she continues, "and those plans did not involve being in our hometown or listening to our _boring_ relatives."

"They weren't happy."

"Well," she sighs, "my parents weren't going to say anything. I made it all the way through college without being married off, after all, and I think they were getting anxious."

"Oh." Andy winces."Seriously?"

"It was a different time." She shrugs. "I had this aunt, though, my father's sister. Very independent, widowed in her mid-30s, never remarried. When I told her I was engaged - I'll never forget this - she put her hands on my shoulders and looked me square in the eyes. She said, 'Sharon, you don't have to charge at the first matador who waves his cape.'"

It's the kind of absurd advice that well-meaning relatives have been passing along for ages. But this particular delivery has Andy wanting to shake this long-lost aunt's hand. "Oh, sure. The old Irish Catholic bullfighting metaphor." He waits a beat, then adds, "Because there are so many matadors among our people."

Sharon nearly doubles over laughing, rubbing at her forehead. The weight from earlier disappears, even given the difficult topic of discussion. "Right?" She rolls her shoulders as she straightens, releasing tension he didn't realize she'd been holding. "I thought it was just as ridiculous then, but I wasn't going to _say_ that."

"Naturally." Andy can see her, even decades up the line, fighting to keep from rolling her eyes. Like with her superiors now, Sharon would never want to disrespect her family. But she'd still have strong opinions on how wrong they were.

"But, as I'm sure you also know, there's this whole culture, outside of the Church, even, of what it _means_ to carry on a marriage. And that's basically: once you're in, you're in." Sharon's gaze drops to the tabletop. "Which is what Aunt Margaret understood and I didn't."

Andy knows the pattern like the back of his hand. "You're raised in that environment, no one talks about thier marriage problems because there's no out anyway. It gets easy to believe that _everyone_ is unhappy."

"Exactly. So that took up a lot of time, just thinking we could - well, I could - power through. We went to this priest in Northridge, he must've been the most conservative guy left in the city." She hones her voice into a blade, and its familiarity is oddly comforting, like a friend returning home from war. "He told me that it was _my_ job to fix it. To make Jack honor his vows." There's no trace of regret when she adds, "I was too busy for that."

A memory surfaces, one of the few times Andy crossed Sharon's path around that time. She'd been in the booking room at the jail, dragging one cuffed dirtbag in each hand, looking small and fierce between them. "Too busy collaring crack slingers in Central."

"I was." There's a note of pride in her voice. She takes a sip of tea, hiding her smile within the mug. She loses herself in thought for a moment before saying, "I'd like to think I would have had the strength to send Jack on his way. But that became a moot point." She doesn't have to explain that part. "Once he left, it was over. I had no second thoughts on that. I just didn't tell anyone _else_ that I knew it was over."

"Well that's your prerogative, right? It wouldn't have made your life any easier at the time, by the sounds of it."

"Yes, well, I had other motivations." Her expression twists into something else. "I hate losing." The words are tinted with a touch of confession.

Rather than question her comparison of divorce to losing, Andy focuses on the obvious. "I've caught on to that."

"And I hate admitting that I've lost."

"Yeah, I've noticed that too."

This leads her into her next point with a smile. "So I wasn't interested in admitting to my parents, my aunt," she twirls her fingers, "whomever else, that 25-year-old me, who was so certain on what she was doing, had…" she trails off, searching for the right description among the paper lanterns overhead. She finds it with a wry quirk of her lips as she meets his eyes again. "Screwed up so royally."

He frowns. "You didn't screw up, though."

Her answer is immediate. "I guess that depends on who you ask." Before he can argue the point, she continues, "Everything ended up fine. Good, even. My kids are raised and well-adjusted, at least as far as I know. I've advanced through my career, I recovered my finances. I have nothing to complain about."

Andy can't dispute that Sharon is a great cop (as much as he hated to admit it, before) and, from all evidence, an excellent mother. But to say she doesn't have anything to complain about is to paper over something dark, some hellbent force that ripped her careful plans off the rails. He can't quite define the gloom surrounding it. It's fatalistic, somewhat self-punishing, unlike everything else he knows of her. It makes his chest burn.

"Anyway," Sharon draws out the word as she gestures to flag down the waitress. "Eventually the guilt faded and I stopped caring what anyone else thought. I arranged the separation once everyone had already accepted the idea. Avoiding a divorce came down to complacency and distraction." She twists her hand into a palm-up position, flourishing her final point."And that's my not-good reason."

When the waitress stops at their table, Sharon asks for the check. Andy figures that means she's ready to drop the topic, but she adds, "It's been easier to keep the status quo. I haven't had to deal with it, so I haven't."

"Except now Jack's here in Los Angeles again." Only after he says it does Andy catch the insensitivity in the comment. If she doesn't want to deal with it, she doesn't have to deal with it, even if the jerk is sharing a city with her again.

But Sharon nods, her mouth fixed in a firm line, then says, "Yes he is. And I get the feeling that he might try to force my hand."

Having already taken several risks, Andy has to slam on the breaks before he says, _Maybe that's a good thing_. The sentiment is so far beyond his business, it might as well be in Japan. He keeps quiet and reaches for the check when the waitress returns, but Sharon deflects his hand with a smile.

"Uh-uh. My turn."

Her preoccupation with the bill leaves Andy to mull over her story, the time and place in which it happened. Back then, he and Jack ran in the same shitty, toxic circles. They were never friends, but were familiar enough to exchange rounds at the bar. They were close enough, proximity-wise, to take part in several of the same good-ol-boy grouse sessions that stretched out for hours at a time; grown men sitting around bitching about their bills, their cases, their sergeants, their wives.

Andy has probably heard the other side of this story, warped to fit certain images, smoothed by tumblers of Crown, and undoubtedly forgotten by the following morning. Had he even listened, then? Would he have known or cared to notice the havoc being wreaked on the other side of the coin?

The answer is no, of course. That would have required a certain level of self-awareness, of recognizing pain being inflicted, that Andy didn't have at that point.

"I had no idea it was so bad. I mean, back then." He trusts Sharon to know what he means, even if he can't quite spell it out.

She looks up, eyebrow peaked. "Of course not."

From some far-off place, a rush of guilt courses through him. It must show, because her tone softens. "No, that's not a slight on you, Andy." She busies herself with counting out bills as she says, "If there's one thing Jack excels at, it's concealment. He hides his problems, he hides his anger, he hides his resentment."

"He hides himself. Physically, I mean.."

Sharon's response is, once again, carefully nonchalant. "When things get bad enough, yes."

Andy lets his resentment of the entire situation burn at the edges of his answer, being the typical contrast to her cool acceptance. "That's bullshit."

She holds his stare for a long moment before saying, "Yes. It is."

This reassures him, for a reason that he doesn't want to spend much time unpacking. If nothing else, Sharon is on top of the situation. She's gonna handle it her way, but it'll be handled.

Still, he's reminded of the phone call when she leans down to get her bag. Their conversation in the interim has emboldened him to clear up an earlier offer. "I'm serious about what I said before." At her questioning look, he clarifies, "If he threatens you, I mean."

"That isn't going to be a problem-"

"But if it is."

Sharon stands, crosses her arms, and says, "I'm armed and he's not stupid."

"I would disagree on the second point." And he would, vehemently, for all of the reasons she just finished discussing. But rather than go down that road, Andy says, "I'm just saying you can call me, anytime, if you need backup."

Her eyes drop to the floor as a smile, a real one, lights up her face. "Okay," she looks up again, and he feels himself returning her expression. "You might come to regret that offer, though," she says, mischievous, as she turns to leave.

"I doubt it."

He isn't sure, at first, whether she's heard him. But then she pauses and turns back to him, with a soft laugh. "Good night, Andy."


	3. Can't Think about it Now

_January 2014._

After her home empties, the last pair of patrol officers stepping outside with nods and open-ended offers of, "If you need anything, ma'am," Sharon sinks onto the couch. A now-unfamiliar quiet settles into every corner of the condo. The evening's events begin to gnaw at the fringes of her resolve. It had been so close to ending, right downstairs, this life that she'd taken on to protect.

For all of Rusty's bravado, he'd had no reference for the depths of what he managed to get himself into.

Then again, neither had Sharon. This truth circles her like a wasp. She hadn't known what to prepare for, this reality taking shape beyond her darkest expectations.

In a moment when she isn't quite sure what to do, not least because there's nothing to be done, she's roused by a pattern of light raps on her door. She braces herself to find Chief Taylor through the peephole, here to pass on more bad news. Perhaps the man from downstairs had killed again, or maybe each of their few leads had already run cold.

With these possibilities in mind, she's relieved to find Andy behind the knock. He grips a white paper bag in one hand and a thin stack of folders in the other. Sharon blinks at him a few times after pulling the door open, as if he's appeared at her condo out of thin air. The keys sticking up from the pocket of his jacket and his just-loosened tie say otherwise.

Still, his sense of timing is impeccable today.

"Andy," her lips curl into a grin, half-despite herself. "What are you doing here?"

"I was wrapping up a few things with SIS, down at the office. They've scraped together a file on the creep," his voice hones into a blade on the word, "that did this." He holds up the file. "Thought you might want to take a look."

"I would." She steps aside, allowing him past her, and spares the shortest of glances toward the uniforms down the hall before closing them on the other side of the door. She nods to the bag in his other hand. "And that?"

"Thought you might be hungry."

At the mention of food, her stomach grinds. Sharon's efforts to keep a straight face must fail, because he quickly adds, "I thought you might be hungry if I stopped at Pietro's."

He must have remembered the vague ramblings she'd dipped into after they'd stopped there a few months ago, on the way back to PAB from the scene of a shooting. The unexceptional 24-hour strip mall spot was probably kept afloat by the number of officers from Northeast who seem to depend upon it for the majority of their meals. Sharon couldn't help but wax nostalgic during their visit, recalling the number of late nights she'd spent there over her years in patrol, hunched over paperwork and trying to eat too-large sandwiches one handed while the kindly proprietor, the eponymous Pietro, fretted over her workload.

Comfort food that it is, Andy's mention of the deli manages to summon her appetite from somewhere beyond the laser-focused concern that has overwhelmed her evening. "Well," she says, "when you put it like that…"

He follows her into the kitchen. "I got you one of those twisted turkey whatevers—"

She smiles. "Turkey toaster?"

"Sure." He drops the bag onto the countertop and frowns toward it. "That explains why the kid at the counter was giving me a weird look."

As improbable as it would have been just minutes earlier, Sharon laughs at the scene he's sketched out. His face smooths into a lopsided and self-satisfied grin. "Anyway," he continues, "I got you a turkey whatever, whole wheat bread, spinach, tomato, onion, avocado instead of mayo, extra mustard, hot peppers, and," he finishes with a flourish that bends the list into a question, "double provolone?"

Her jaw drops. "How in the world did you remember all of that?"

He shrugs. "I pay attention."

He does. Sharon's beginning to catch onto the way Andy observes and catalogs information, tucking away even the smallest details for use later. She shouldn't be surprised — the skill is intertwined with his success as a detective. But she isn't used to being on the receiving end of this kind of attention.

It's odd; not unpleasant, but different. She wonders, from time to time, what kind of case he's piecing together on her in his head. And then, when she's feeling particularly reckless, she follows that trail into imagining how he might choose to act upon what he's found.

But now is not the time for that. "I should be the one buying _you_ dinner," she says, thinking back to his timely phone call.

"Not necessary." Andy pauses in the process of unwrapping his own sandwich, reconsidering, meeting her eyes. "Though I wouldn't turn it down."

"Raincheck, then."

He goes back to unwrapping. "I'm just glad everything turned out okay."

Sharon pulls back a chair at the table. "Have a seat." As he relocates his sandwich and the files, she asks, "I have sparkling water, you want one?"

"Absolutely. Thanks."

Settled with their dinner at the table, Andy flips through and narrates the folder containing the barebones information SIS was able to collect. It's the frame of an investigation, one that they'll have to race to build out before the letter-writer disappears.

Sharon stares at the grainy stills that Lieutenant Cooper extracted from surveillance at the park. "This man has to be connected to Stroh."

"Yeah, but we'll be hard-pressed to find out how. He's too smart to pull one of his past clients for this."

The long history of the case rears back and smacks her in the face. She's been too focused on the direct threat posed by the letters, overlooking the sociopath at its center. Her temple pounds. She absently rubs at the pain, failing to ease it away.

"Hey, you okay?"

She offers him a small nod and drops her hand. "What would make a person to do something like this?"

He watches her poring over the list of connected homicides for a moment before asking, "Is that a rhetorical question?"

"No," she looks at him, sidelong. "Not if you have insight."

"Some guys, they go through too much," Andy squints toward the opposite wall, as if details from a long trail of investigations are written there. "It's more than just 'snapping'. It's like...a loss of humanity. That's when things get sad, even for someone like me."

"Someone like you?" She half-laughs, half-sighs. "You make yourself sound like…some kind of loach."

He shrugs. "I've seen some shit." He wads up his sandwich wrapper, pausing long enough to shoot her an apologetic look. "Sorry." She waves him off, and he continues with a smirk. "I have a reputation to uphold. So don't be compromising it."

"Sure thing, tough guy." Sharon voices the rib without thinking, without examining the familiarity in it. It might be too much, for them. Are they to the 'gentle teasing' part of their friendship? Sometimes, based on where they started, she wonders about lines: where they are, when she might step across one, all the ways they might break this _thing_ between them.

And why, exactly, is she even worrying about all this, on a night like tonight?

Andy, for his part, just smiles that warm, surprised smile, so different from the suite of expressions he wears at work. It's the one that earned a place in her memory the first time she saw it, when she offered to accompany him to his daughter's wedding. He tamps it down with a swallow of water, though even this can't wash away the stubborn hint of it.

In the lull of their conversation, Sharon accepts that the second half of her sandwich is mocking her still-unsettled stomach. She folds the wrinkled, damp wrapper back around it, and sticks it in the refrigerator. She tries and fails to roll some of the tension from her neck. The attempt isn't helped by her notice of two folders left on the counter, marked with the telltale initials of the Criminal Intelligence Division.

She waves them in Andy's direction as she heads toward the living room, seeking out a base level of physical comfort. "What about these?"

"Ah, those are from the spooks."

"I see that."

Trailing her to the couch, Andy settles close to the armrest. The spot is precise: he's near enough to read the files she relocated to the coffee table, far enough to pretend they're not sitting _next_ to each other.

"Haven't had a chance to read all the way through them yet." He turns one of the folders over in his hands, passing the other to her. "It felt like a shot in the dark to include CID, but Taylor insisted."

They sit in silence for a moment, bent over informant interviews and surveillance reports. Within a few pages, it's clear that none of the information will be of use in their hunt. Their subject is nondescript enough as to blend into almost any LA sidewalk, and he has no connections to the criminal networks at the heart of CID's mission.

Andy closes the cover of his folder and echoes her verdict. "I got nothing here, how about you?"

"Same."

After tossing his folder back onto the table, he sits with his elbows on his knees, like a basketball player strategizing during a timeout. "I still can't believe the lengths this guy went to, coming after Rusty."

"He managed to get far too close." The truth of this presses on Sharon's chest, in a way she hadn't allowed earlier. She releases a shaky sigh. "It feels like we're chasing a ghost."

"But we're not." Andy moves his palm to her shoulder, a reassuring gesture that his words reinforce. "This asshole has a face, he has fingerprints and a history. By making his move now, he's also gotten closer to _us_. And we're gonna find him." His fingers curl into a gentle squeeze. "When we do, you can have the first crack at him."

Sharon narrows her eyes at his insinuation. He clarifies, with a grin. "Metaphorically, of course." After a beat, as if compelled, he adds, "The rest of us can handle the literal part."

"Ugh, please don't." She sighs, sinking back into the cushions. He lets his hand drop as she goes. She can't fend off a stab of loss as the contact fades.

"I'll try to make sure everyone behaves." He takes a sip of from his water. "Mostly."

She can't hold back a soft laugh. "You're incorrigible."

"What can I say?" He shrugs. "I don't like to make promises I can't keep."

It's meant, with a quick smile, to be a joke, a continuation of his ribbing, part of his apparent mission to both reassure and lighten her mood. But there is an undeniable, appealing honesty to the statement.

It spurs Sharon into speaking a truth of her own, one that's been building a rigid tension down her spine for weeks. "I don't know if I can protect him."

Lending voice to the words makes them more real, a surrender to the outcome she's been fighting. She blinks against tears pricking at her eyes. "I should've admitted that weeks ago, rather than have him go out with SIS."

She twists her hands together in her lap, a distraction from both the flood of emotion and the careful way Andy watches her. She can't shake the idea that he's gathering another observation for his case.

He rubs at his jaw, turning his attention to the hills beyond her balcony. "None of us knew the lengths this guy would go to."

"Does that excuse it? Does that make it okay that I didn't pick the straightforward safest choice?" Her voice is glassy, calm water compared to the river rushing through her head. The words might as well be coming from someone else's mouth. She can't let it go, this guilt, this sinking into the realms of what-ifs and then-elses. Flighty thoughts not worth more than glances, now demanding deep inspection.

"Sharon, there isn't always a right answer, y'know?" His shoulders rise and fall in the span of the sentence, closed out by a slight shake of his head. "The way I see it, this drive to find his pen pal is the same force that made Rusty agree to testify against Stroh: independence, willfulness, and an interest in doing the right thing."

She hums an agreement. "And, yet, what I see most of all is how he keeps ending up in harm's way."

"Yeah, well, you're his mom, so…" Andy states this as an inarguable truth, instead of the thorny issue that others try to make it.

"Kind of."

"More than kind of." He watches her from the corner of his eye before gathering up his empty can and napkin. "No one is expecting you to make one hundred percent impartial decisions when it comes to this kid." He stands. "Uh, trash can?"

"Around the corner, to the left of the fridge." She watches him go and, once the thump of the lid against the bin sounds out, she counters. "Emma does."

"Emma?" He screws his face into a grimace that matches his the wide cast of his arms. "When has a _lawyer_ ever made a solid decision on the human element of a case?"

Sensing the end of his visit is approaching, Sharon joins Andy in the kitchen. "I'd say she tried, but…"

"She didn't," he finishes, with a force that betrays his annoyance toward the situation.

Sharon can't argue the point. Emma had exacerbated the situation by threatening, multiple times, to send Rusty away. She made him feel like he needed to hide the letters if he wanted to stay with Sharon, at his school, near the few friends he'd made. If he'd felt comfortable in passing those letters to Sharon, they might have been able to find their source, before it came to _this_.

Andy clears his throat, capturing her attention. "Uh, I think I already know the answer to this, but just in case…"

She tilts her head as he trails off, inviting the rest of his point.

"Are you okay staying here, after everything today?"

His offer is thoughtful. It's also surprising enough that she can't deflect it offhand. Facing a question with several possible answers, Sharon goes with the most basic correction of logic. "That was downstairs."

"Yeah, okay." He drags the words out, making clear that she's talking around his point.

"I'll be fi—" She stops herself, deciding that half-truths don't fit in the vein of their conversation earlier. With a long nod, she reframes it. "I probably won't sleep much anyway."

Andy watches her for a long moment, and she can almost measure the concern building up between them. Before he says whatever's on his mind, though, his jaw shifts, just enough for her to notice. With that, the gauge is cleared. He gathers up the folders and squeezes her forearm, just for a second, before heading for the door.

But, over his shoulder, he says, "No one would blame you for taking some time tomorrow."

With a tight smile meant to reassure, she says, "I need to be there."

"I know. Still."

The message between the words: he wishes she could take a moment, that she could rest. She pulls the door open for him, nodding toward the files balanced in the crook of his arm. "There'll be time for that, after we wrap up this case."

 _This case._ That's how she needs to think about it. Andy understands, and surely knows that he'd have the same priority. "There will be."

From across the threshold, Sharon approaches another of those lines, allowing exhaustion and the familiarity to push her forward. "And, most likely, there'll be time to fulfill that raincheck dinner, too. So think about where you want to go."

He smiles. "I will." With his signature lazy salute, he sets off toward the elevators.

Beyond the closed door, she hears him gabbing with her security detail at the end of the hall. The thought of what he might be telling the officers, no doubt leveraging his rank and ordering them to let absolutely no one approach her door, has her rolling her eyes. The thought of what they must think, with him showing up to her home after nine and staying for more than an hour, has her resting her forehead against the cool metal.

The realization that she wouldn't have traded his visit anyway...well, that'll just have to wait for another day.

They've solved nothing yet, but Sharon is looser than before he showed up. She's more certain of what happens next. And, even if the memory of Rusty nearly being killed on the third floor keeps her awake for the foreseeable future, at least guilt won't.


End file.
